Open Letter to the Competition Commission of Pakistan

13 February 2012

Ms. Rahat Kaunain Hassan

Chairperson

Competition Commission of Pakistan

7^th Floor South

Islamabad Stock Exchange Towers

55-B Jinnah Avenue, Islamabad

(rhassan@cc.gov.pk)

Notice of Contravention of Competition Act, 2010 by Lahore Bar Association

Madam Chairperson:

As a lawyer before serving the Competition Commission of Pakistan, I’m sure you spent your share of mid-summer mornings and afternoons sweating in the dust of the civil courts of Lahore.  I once spent my birthday – which is in June – in court, wondering why on earth grown men and women would wear black woollen suits in the heat.  But that the Aiwan-e-Adal for you.  You either love it or leave it.

I’ve had countless mornings spent rushing to ensure attendance and then, later in the day, arguing a full roster of cases.  Of course one has to take breaks.  I’m not a great fan of the Bar Room – it’s dark, hot and full of lawyers.  So I usually take a refreshment outside.  The fellows who operate the canteen are friends, as are the small army of crate-wielding urchins serving up cold water or soda throughout the court complex.

Madam Chairperson, I wish to tell you an open secret: The only antidote for civil court is a cold bottle of lemon barley squash.  It’s my drink of choice.  The elixir of the dewani trade.  I usually ask for it by name.  I’m not a fan of the soda pop.  As I’ve grown older, I’ve developed an intolerance to the carbonated water, caffeine and sugar.  I’m sure the lemon barley has its share of sugar but, god help me, it doesn’t give me the shakes like the fizzy stuff.  No sir, a few sips lemon barley and I’m up for haggling with the likes of rent-controllers and guardian judges.

Except today, Madam Chairperson, I find that the one thing I’d look forward to whilst appearing in the Civil Court is no more.  That is to say, I have it on good authority that the Lahore Bar Association – having taken far too literal an interpretation to their name – have prohibited the sale of Shezan beverages anywhere on the premises of the Aiwan-e-Adal.  Shezan, of course, is the brand that produces lemon barley.  They also produce a mango juice but, if you ask me, the mango juice wallah – Haji Sahib or something – near Data Darbar has perfected this particular type of juice and, well, once you’ve tasted it, Shezan or no Shezan, it’s either the real deal or no deal.

Anyway.

The Lahore Bar Association, I learn, has decided to impose this restriction on sweet beverages in civil court because, they say, Shezan is a company owned by members of the Ahmedi sect.  Of course, I have no idea whether this is so.  Why would I?  Would anyone even care?  But the Lahore Bar Association seems to have a strong point of view on this issue.  The end result, so to speak, is now I don’t have the choice of selecting my favourite beverage when I go about my working day.  This is clearly a preposterous and non-sustainable situation.  I mean, if we let this sort of thinking out of hand, next thing you know people will be asking us to burn the Lahore Resolution of 1940 simply because Sir Zafarullah Khan was one of its authors. 

So why am I writing to you?

I read that section 4(1) of the Competition Act, 2010 prohibits undertakings from making decisions in respect of the supply, distribution or control of goods that has the object or effect of preventing or restricting competition.  I understand that Section 2(1)(q) puts a wide definition on the phrase “undertaking” – wide enough, I think, to include an entity such as the Lahore Bar Association.  If this is so, wouldn’t the Lahore Bar Association’s decision to prohibit the sale of Shezan beverages on the premises of the Civil Court amount to an agreement prohibited by the Competition Act, 2010 and, according to Section 4(3), void?

I have read that the Competition Commission has decided similar issues.  For example, in the Matter of Murree Brewery Company Limited vs. SIZA Foods (Private) Limited (2009), the Commission took notice of the practice of restaurants such as McDonalds, Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken to have exclusive arrangements with either Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola.  These exclusivity agreements meant that the Murree Brewery Company was unable to sell its non-alcoholic beverages in these restaurants.  The Commission saw to it that these restrictive trade practices were changed.

Madam Chairperson, I hereby formally complain to you of the prohibited agreement put into effect by the Lahore Bar Association in its decision to prohibit the sale of Shezan within the premises of the Lahore Civil Court.  The law is a dreary enough profession.  Not having small mercies like lemon barley would take whatever colour’s left in it.  It would also expose me to products which, as I said, I simply can’t stomach anymore. I therefore request you to step in and show these jokers that there is law in Pakistan.  That it is sensible.  And that it doesn’t give a hoot about the belief of the person who makes your favourite drink.

With best regards.

Very truly yours,

Ahmad Rafay Alam

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

I wrote this piece immediately after BB's assassination.  Lahore, like other cities, was paralysed with strikes and riots.  A three-day mourning period meant that everything was shut.  My column was about cities and the environment, but I wanted to pay tribute.  This piece was published in The News.

Benazir Bhutto (1953-2007)

Before Partition, political dissent often manifested itself in violence towards traffic lights.  Apparently, during the halcyon days of the Pakistan Movement, it was considered routine to attack and destroy traffic signals at the slightest provocation.  These British introductions represented, it seems, enough of the Colonial establishment to justify, in the eyes of passionate “freedom fighters,” such vandalism.  Sadly, not even Partition has spared the fate of the innocent traffic light; they have remained a constant target and victim whenever the public turns unruly, much to the chagrin of better minded people.  In today’s day and age, when Pakistan is supposed to be run by Pakistanis and in the interest of Pakistanis, it’s considered bad form to take on a defenseless traffic device. 

On Friday, before prayers, my wife and I decided to venture onto the streets of Lahore anxious to see for ourselves the truth of the television and numerous text message reports of violence throughout this and other places in the country.  It was midmorning and the city streets were empty.  In the evening before, the President had announced a three day period of grief. 

Lahore was beautiful and unaccompanied by the everyday noise, traffic, dust and that general sense of congestion that makes it less and less attractive.  Every undulation of the Mall was uninterrupted and shafts of midmorning light pierced through the fresh tree line.  The fact it took something so gruesome to bring us a glimpse of its features weighed heavily on the both of us.

In Gulberg, the ubiquitous green PML-Q bicycle banners, so amusingly defaced on the Canal when they were put up, had now been violently torn down.  The path was clear.  This evidence of protest began at the bottom of Guru Mangat road and made its way to Liberty Market.  There, of the four large posters (depicting the Gulberg Town Nazim, the City Nazim, the Chief Minister and his son, Moonis Elahi, who is contesting for a provincial seat from the area), celebrating the recent redevelopment of the area only two bore marks of violence: those of the former Chief Minister and his Prince Ascending.  Clear evidence that they were systematically targeted.

The location of burnt tire marks was very instructive.  They delineated the political allegiance of each area.  On the Shalimar Link road, towards the Shalimar Gardens, every 500 or so meters lay shattered glass and the charred remains of burnt rubber: evidence of the anger of the mob.  The air was tense.  As if something was happening.  Every dozen or so meters small groups of men huddled at the mouths of the alleys and lanes that feed into that artery.  From the majority of the election banners, one could tell this was a PPP area; the men on the streets residents eager to share gossip from the night before.

Near the UET those green PML-Q bicycles banners stood untouched on street lights.  Clearly visible amid the desolation – we may have been the only car on that road at the time – they bisected the Grand Trunk Road like a row of artificial green attempting, tragically, to take the place of a tree-lined median.  On top of a nearby building, a 30x60 hoarding proudly displayed the credentials of that area’s candidate.  Yet there was no one on the road to see it.  The seat, it was clear, belonged to the former dispensation.

There were also signs of violence along the Shalimar Road and at Laxmi Chowk.  But by far the largest protest demonstration must have occurred in front of the Lahore Press Club.  There, shattered glass lay in mounds and the mouth of Durand road lay covered in the debris of burnt rubber and nearby PML-Q hoardings.  From the vandalized posters around the area, angry crowds must have seeped to Simlar Pahari, collected in large numbers there and then marched up Davis Road, past the PML House, and onto the Mall.  The fact that nothing further than that point appeared to have been vandalized tells us about the state of the crowd.  By this time, their spontaneous anger, shock and frustration would have given way to grief and sadness.  This would have deadened their vigour.   

At the Governor’s House, near Naqi Market and Hall road large number of police and Rangers milled about.  Some were taking in the morning tabloids, all of which carried front page photos of the carnage of the night before.  Driving past, it seemed that they were holding up Benazir placards.  More bored police, some faces lost on the yet unopened front page, sat about in the Cantonment and all those other high-end, and, therefore, “high risk” residential areas.  There were no signs of violence there.  In Defence, one could physically take in the fact that the area has the highest density of automobile ownership in the city:  Because this wasn’t a typical day off, because there was no visiting or working to be done, every driveway was full.  Each family safely huddled together.

I remember witnessing Benazir’s return to Pakistan.  She landed in this then sleepy metropolis on April 1986.   The crowds that greeted her were unprecedented.  It took her all day to get from the airport, past our residence on the Mall and on towards Minto Park.  The fact that she – at that time relatively politically inexperienced – got the reaction she did, and that too in capital of the civil and military establishment must have shaken General Zia.  Lahoris can spot political potential from miles.  Even the significance of Chief Justice Chaudhry’s reception in this city over two decades later in May of this year was measured against Benazir’s welcome.  If only one could have read the features of Lahore’s face that morning.  I’m sure its message would be equally profound for our recently retired General.  This happened on his watch, and try as he may, he won’t be able to spurn this legacy.

On 14 February 2006 lunatic extremists took vandalism to new heights by ambushing an otherwise peaceful protest against those silly cartoons.  The resulting looting, vandalism and arson spree stretched from the Metropolitan Bank on Kashmir Road all the way to the motorbikes parked at Bank Square.  The mob – boys in their teens interspersed with the odd extremist – also took on street lights.  All the lights on the signals on that area of the Mall were ruthlessly attacked.  But, as I said, Lahore can spot political talent from miles.  It saw no reason to condone the protest.  On Friday, I didn’t spot a single broken traffic light.   

Letter from Ardeshir Cowasjee to Mr. Justice (R) Sardar Muhammad Iqbal

Ardeshir Cowasjee is arguably Pakistan's most influential columnist. He's lost the bite he had a decade ago - and they are hundreds of aspirants to the title - but, back in the day, the Cowasjee column was The Last Word.

Before he became Dawn's Sunday centrepiece, he was a letter writer. It was his wit and turn of phrase in this avatar that got him the column (and maybe the fact that he's also very influential and would have got it if he'd asked anyway).

So anyway, like I said in my previous post, while looking for something, I found something else. In this case, it was a letter Cowasjee wrote to Mr. Justice (Retired) Sardar Muhammad Iqbal on his appointment as Wafaqi Mohtasib (Federal Ombudsman).

I've scanned a copy of the letter that I have. It is epic on so many levels.



But in case you can't make it out, I've transcribed it below:

Copy

Ardeshir Cowasjee 10 Mary Road Karachi 0402

Wednesday September 14 1983

My dear Sardar Iqbal,

Congratulations! Placed as you are, high up in the hierarchy, I am sure you will be able to do some good.

While doing good, I hope you will effectively deal with sycophancy, the destructive weapon of the low. Somebody has even tried to call you God Almighty (MUSLIM September 6). A blasphemous act by any book, then I suppose you will forgive him. It is not peculiar to our country alone to call somebody God. Many a member of Brooks has entered the club having been awarded the CMG wearing an expression saying “Call Me God”, and when he gets the KCMG, “Kindly Call Me God”, but on trying hard and being elevated to GCMG his expression conveys to those around him that even “God Calls Me God”.

The complaint I make today (No. 001 for identification purposes) is against the Ministry of Information. I charge them with overexposing our President, bringing him and his Government into disrepute and harassing the people in the process.

Please have counted how many times the word “ZIA” appears in the newspapers. And, as if enough is not enough, they headline him over columns unnecessarily. A bus falls into a ravine and “ZIA SHOCKED”, a 98 year old poet dies and “ZIA GRIEVED”, an earthquake in Bulgaria and again “ZIA SHOCKED”; the President of Oongabonga dies (probably of overeating the wrong flesh) and we again read “ZIA GRIEVED”. Rene Frank dies, but the headline reads “ZIA CONDOLES DEATH OF RENE FRANK” (DAWN September 10). Such headlines appear so frequently and repeatedly that we get the impression that we are being ruled by a President in a perpetual state of either shock or grief.

The again, our men of the Ministry forget that Marconi established wireless communication in 1897 and it is times like the present when men like me and many others bring out their transistors and wait for Lillibudero. The BBC said at 0700 on September 11 that the President’s car was stoned at Dadu, that there were disturbances and hostile demonstrations, and that tear gas had to be used. Half an hour later, DAWN and MORNING STAR headlines read “NO POLITICAL UNREST IN SIND SAYS GEN ZIA”. The continuation columns were headed “NO UNREST IN SIND”. Of course, we know that what the BBC says is not gospel, but then its credibility is better than that of our Ministry and its is heard all over the world. It is a very powerful weapon and ways must be thought of to counter whatever they may falsely say. Mere saying that its new head is a Yehudi will not help.

The TV men run a close second. They invariably bring on the President at the wrong time, disrupting people’s expectations. The man who has been waiting to see his favourite serial, or the one good film of the week, is antagonized when Sadar-i-Mumulekat is brought on instead. An incident which you may remember occurred some summers back. For once in its life, PNSC had done something right and bought time to show the Wimbledon finals live. Offices and shops were closed, people stopped doing what they were doing, and then, lo and behold, on came our President and he outlasted the finals. He could have been shown at any other better time, unlike the live Wimbledon finals.

The InfoMin men traditionally contribute largely to their masters’ downfall. You will no doubt remember the Rotiman (the innovator of the Black press laws). He ‘discovered’ the man in Saidu who had heard an ‘avaz’ calling upon him to seek his maker, failing which, his apostle. He then had a great dream which told him he didn’t have to go for there existed such a man in Rawalpindi. Overwhelmed with joy and happiness, the Saidu man spun, wove and stitched a woollen choga and trekked to ‘Pindi’. And the next thing we say on the front page of the PAKISTAN TIMES (a good paper in Mian’s days – MHSRIP) was Ayub Khan wearing that choga which fitted him well - - even the sleeve length was perfect. Then came FRIENDS NOT MASTERS, then “Decade of Development”, and then rot. The Rotiman has gone SOUTH, but word has it that he wants to come home. Lately he lectures our Press extolling the “Freedom of the Press”.

Bhutto’s Nasim Ahmed was no better. By the time he finished, the people were wrought into one. No one, just no one, believed what he made the Press print, or the box say.

At present our media is not beyond redemption. You have got an able Secretary. Your Ministry can perhaps do something.

I hope you are well.

Good wishes

Yours sincerely

Ardeshir Cowasjee

Sardar Mohammad Iqbal

WAFAQI MOHTASIB

Islamabad

PS: The mail being undependable, perhaps someone would be kind enough to acknowledge receipt of this communication.

Notes:

(1) The God Calls Me God routine is from Yes, Minister a well known and well-loved satire that, rumour has it, was taken off PTV because it was being taken too seriously!

(2) I have no idea who Rene Frank was/is.

How Mian Jan got a job

My grandfather, Syed Mahmood Alam, was a tennis player. He has the distinction of playing Wimbledon twice: Once as an Indian and then as a Pakistani.

Few people know that tennis is also how my grandfather landed his first job.

Last night, while I was searching for something else, I came across a note he wrote about how he was hired. I thought I would share it with you.